An Arms Race of the Imagination
I have recently been fascinated by the work of
: a writer, independent researcher, and aspiring “cultural engineer.” Defender’s main contribution to the discourse™ is a concept called “open memetics.” I’m still wrapping my head around this stuff, but here’s the basic idea: humanity is currently doing a terrible job at anticipating how ideas spread, especially online, and we’re all suffering for it. Academic research in fields like cultural evolution, sociology, and media studies is valuable, but it’s constrained and slow-moving.1 Furthermore, the cutting edge of this research often happens behind closed doors. Tech companies and advertising agencies spend boatloads of money to actively shape public opinion, and they generally don’t share their findings.Why should we care about this problem? The clearest application is in politics. By now, you know the story: in 2024, a loosely affiliated network of ostensibly apolitical podcasters, right-wing influencers, tech oligarchs, and Republican politicians succeeded in completely reshaping the discourse in their favor. This is the paradigm for mass politics right now and in the near future. If the public were more savvy to these tactics, we’d probably all be better off right now. And then there’s the question that is harder, but no less relevant: when the next paradigm shift comes, will we be able to spot it?
People like Defender think the solution is to openly theorize about and experiment on our information networks in public. They hope that getting people interested in this stuff will 1) help to get informed consent to do large, open experiments2 and 2) encourage people to be better information-spreading agents in their own communities. The idea is that influencers and their communities need to figure this out together and, within reason, risk being loudly wrong in the pursuit of shared truth.3
Some other notable players in this emerging field are
, , and the Joe Rogan of the Left himself, . I’ll focus on Josh for a moment because in May 2025 he published a sort of manifesto for his podcast Doomscroll, which has quickly become one of the hottest new shows in town. I would recommend reading his post in full because of how explicitly he describes his tactics, but I’ll summarize here: In what he calls an “Open Conspiracy,” Josh lays out how the show is intentionally structured to manipulate existing information networks for his political ends. How comfortable you are with this plan is probably bounded by how sympathetic you are to Josh’s politics, but I want to contend that it’s better for everyone when this is laid bare. If information communities don’t hash out what kinds of ideas they’re comfortable spreading, they will inevitably be co-opted by external actors.So why is any of this relevant to a group of friends posting confessional poetry and short stories about aquatic dystopia on their shared Substack? To be honest, I’m still parsing that out. More than anything, this post is meant to be a signal that I think these kinds of projects are and will continue to be important (in addition to getting my friends who are less terminally online than me up to speed). But I also think there is a case to be made for the role of us young artists in this game, and it starts with imagination.
Most of us came into political consciousness in a world defined by lack of imagination. From the left, we had Mark Fisher proclaiming “It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” and from the center we had Francis Fukuyama’s End of History. I think it’s hard to overstate the degree to which feelings about the inevitability of neoliberalism have dominated our culture and politics in the post-Soviet era. However, as this old model erodes and America goes through what looks like mass political realignment, many are feeling permission to dream again. My favorite signal of this is that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson started their book about infrastructure, zoning, and regulatory reform with a short piece of speculative fiction.4
The cultural engineers seem to think this is important too. Josh Citarella got his start making surrealist, speculative fine art before embarking on an independent journalism project to document the radical political journeys of young people. Defender’s community is currently discussing an anthology of utopian sci-fi stories under the premise that collectively imagining their ideal future will get them closer to achieving it.5 These folks understand that having a good idea is not sufficient to transform culture. Rather, ideas need to be propagated through art, media, and the informational soup of the internet that is now inseparable from these things. Cultural transmission is a stochastic process. If you want to affect change, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.6
Right now as I think about these things I recognize that I am left with a feeling that all of this stuff is important and connected more so than some comprehensive argument. Here’s something, though: I have seen AI bros argue that one of the most important things you can do is write online. This is because, in doing so, you are signaling your preferences to the LLMs and thus the impending superintelligence. Unfortunately I think they cooked with this one, though I would like to modify it. Forget signaling your preferences to some hypothetical machine overlord, writing signals your preferences to other people.
Being a good citizen of the world requires meaningfully engaging with it. If you can stand being on it, the same is true of the internet. Here at DC Sentence Club we have chosen to have an online presence. That presence will either shape the culture around us in some tiny way or be passively shaped by it. I know which one I’d rather do.
I am admittedly under informed here. I haven’t seen a comprehensive argument from Defender on why this is the case, and I’ll be working to get up to speed on what people who made careers out of researching this stuff have to say. However, even if academia has all the answers, they need to be put into practice. Folks in this field are concerned with actively shaping culture, not just understanding it.
See the Community Archive.
This is important because you need to empirically test your ideas, but it also has tons of caveats attached to it re: using your platform responsibly (especially for people with large audiences).
My argument here is that the possibility space opening up (as a result of the political, cultural, and technological changes in the post-Trump era) is causing those who operate within the political mainstream to get imaginative in ways they may not have before. All other discourse around this book aside, I think this was a bold move and I applaud the authors for it.
For the title of this piece I took a phrase from the book in question, White Mirror. Defender based a discussion question off of this phrase and clearly thinks it’s apt. I agree. Influencers and their communities, aggregated together into larger-scale information networks, really do wield enough power to change our culture. Many of them are happy to be used by external forces for clout and profit. Some, however, are proactively imagining the futures they want to build and propagating these ideas outward through their communities. I buried the lede because I’ve listened to some of the book and it’s not my cup of tea. I’m excited to see the discussion it generates, though.
Unfortunately, I think you cooked with this one…